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Natalie Z. Kerr

Contact Info

Skills

Packages

R: tidyverse, glmnet, lme4, msm, glmmTMB, gammit, MASS, mgcv, bbmle, sp.

Python: Pandas, NumPy, scipy, matplotlib, seaborn, Scikit-learn.


Disclaimer

Last updated on 2024-03-05.

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Natalie Z. Kerr

Data Scientist & Quantitative Ecologist

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Certificate of Applied Data Science

Cambridge, MA, USA

2023

Tufts University

PhD Candidate in Biology

Medford, MA, USA

2014–2019

University of Queensland

Bachelor of Environmental Science

St Lucia, QLD, Australia

2008–2012

Experience

Data Analytics Consultant

Pocket Prep

Durham, NC

2024-present

  • Consultant for local company that develops an exam preparation app.
  • Built random forest models to evaluate lead indicators of users’ passing their exams.

Assistant Research Professor

Duke University

Durham, NC

2022–present

  • Lead scientist on a US federal grant.
  • Coordinate funded research among 11 scientists across six institutions.
  • Redesigned tertiary-level courses (e.g. Ecology of Human Health).
  • Member of several Duke board and department committees.
  • Advised four undergraduate students in data science projects.
  • Statistics consultant for graduate and postdoctoral researchers.
  • Awarded several fellowship awards.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Duke University

Durham, NC

2019–2022

  • Built predictive spatial models for at-risk species under future climate.
  • Produced quarterly and annual reports to stakeholders.
  • Research aimed to inform cross-jurisdictional management.
  • Invited to give five University seminars to a diverse audience with both analytical and non-analytical backgrounds.
  • Statistics consultant for graduate and postdoctoral researchers.

Graduate Researcher

Tufts University & UC Davis

Medford, MA

2014–2019

  • Data wrangling and analysis for projects with large longitudinal datasets.
  • Developed novel statistical and modeling techniques for exploring high dimensional systems to solve optimization problems.
  • Published six peer-reviewed publications; four were first author.

Selected Workshops & Teaching

Frequentist approaches to data analytics in R

Two-day workshop series funded by the EntSoc Early Careers Professionals initiative. GitHub

Virtual

2020

Ecological Models and Statistics

Undergraduate and graduate tertiary-level course covering Frequentist and Bayesian statistics.

Tufts University

2019

Exploiting the Dynamism of R Software

Half-day workshop at the Entomological Society of America Joint Annual Meeting

Vancouver, Canada

2018

Delta Method and Parametric Bootstrapping to accurately estimate variance in covarying model parameters

Half-day workshop series exploring msm::deltamethod and MASS::mvrnorm functions and applications.

UC Davis, California

2018

Selected Publications

Inclusive fitness may explain some but not all benefits derived from social behavior in a cooperative breeding bird.

American Naturalist. (2023). doi:10.1086/728670

N/A

2023

NZ Kerr, WF Morris, JR Walters.

Larger workers outperform smaller workers across resource environments: An evaluation of demographic data using functional linear models.

Ecology & Evolution. (2021). doi:10.1002/ece3.7239

N/A

2021

NZ Kerr, RL Malfi, NM Williams, EE Crone.

Developmental trap or demographic bonanza? Opposing consequences of earlier phenology in a changing climate for a multivoltine butterfly.

Global Change Biology. (2020). doi:10.1111/gcb.14959

N/A

2020

NZ Kerr, T Wepprich, FS Grevstad, EB Dopman, FS Chew, EE Crone.

Using statistics to design and estimate vital rates in matrix population models for a perennial herb

Population Ecology. (2019). doi:10.1002/1438-390X.12024

N/A

2019

S Ramula, NZ Kerr, EE Crone

Prioritizing management actions for invasive populations using cost, efficacy, demography and expert opinion for 14 plant species world-wide

J. Applied Ecology (2016). doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12592

N/A

2016

NZ Kerr, PWJ Baxter, R Salguero-Gómez, GM Wardle, YM Buckley.